The Filipino people are the citizens of the Republic of the Philippines. The term is also often used to refer to a person having Filipino ancestry. There are about 92,000,000 Filipinos in the Philippines[17] and about 11,000,000 outside the Philippines.[18] Most Filipinos refer to themselves colloquially as "Pinoy" (feminine: "Pinay"), which is a slang word formed by taking the last four letters of "Pilipino" and adding the diminutivesuffix"-y". The pre-1987 Philippine alphabet (Abakada)'s lack of the letter "F" had caused the letter "F" to be substituted with "P". This is the reason, when the 28-letter modern Filipino alphabet has been made official in 1987, the name Filipino was preferred over Pilipino.

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History

The earliest human remains found in the Philippines are the fossilized fragments of a skull and jawbone, discovered in the 1960s by Dr. Robert B. Fox, a North American anthropologist of the National Museum.[19] Anthropologists who have examined these remains agreed that they belonged to modern human beings. These include the homo sapiens, as distinguished from the mid-Pleistocene homo erectus species. Researchers say this indicates that the human remains were pre-Mongoloid, from about 40,000 years ago. Mongoloid is the term which anthropologists applied to the ethnic group which migrated to Southeast Asia during the Holocene period and evolved into the Austronesian people, a group of Malayo-Polynesian-speaking people including those from Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Malagasy, parts of Vietnam as well as the non-Han Chinese Taiwanese Aboriginals.[20]

About 30,000 years ago, the Negritos settled in the islands. They were the ancestors of such tribes of the Philippines as the Aeta, Agta, Ayta, Ati, Dumagat and other tribes of the Philippines, today making up about .003% of the total Philippine population.[21] Approximately 2,000 years ago non-Chinese Taiwanese aborigines settled in what is now the Philippines by sailing by sea or traveling across then-existing land bridges. Much of the present-day Philippine peoples are descended from this group of immigrants. They were also in contact with other East Asian people, such as Chinese, Japanese, Malay, Indonesian, and other South East Asians. Various ethnic groups established several communities formed by the assimilation of various indigenous Philippine kingdoms.[21]

By the 13th century, Muslim traders from present-day Malaysia and Indonesia brought Islam to the Philippines, where it both replaced and was practiced together with indigenous religions. Most indigenous tribes of the Philippines practiced a mixture of Animism, Hindu-Budhist and Islam. Native villages, called barangays are populated by locals called Timawa (Middle Class) and Alipin (slaves) who are mostly of Malay-Austronesian, Australoid and Dravidian mix. They were ruled by Rajahs, Datus and Sultans, who are mostly a product of the Intermarriage of South Asian of Indo-Aryan, Middle Eastern & Greek Ancestry with the indigenous Malay-Austronesian and Chinese Mix.[21].

During the period of Spanishcolonialism beginning in the 16th century, the Philippines was governed by Mexico City on behalf of the Spanish Empire. Early Spanish settlers were mostly explorers, soldiers, government official and religious missionaries born in Spain and Mexico. The Peninsulares (governors born in Spain), mostly of Castillan ancestry settled in the islands to govern the territory. Intermarriage between Spaniards and the indigenous people sometimes occurred, but was not as common as it was in the Americas. Some settlers married the daughters of rajahs and datus (chieftains) to reinforce the colonization of the islands, while some married only other Spaniards. The Spanish recruited thousands of Chinese male migrant workers called sangleys to build the colonial infrastructure in the islands. As the Chinese men married indigenous women, this gave rise to the largest mixed-ethnic group, called mestizo de sangley.

The arrival of the Spaniards to the Philippines attracted many Chinese male immigrants from China, and maritime trade flourished during the Spanish occupation. Most Chinese male immigrants converted to Catholicism, intermarried with indigenous women, and adopted Hispanized names and customs. The children of unions between indigenous Filipinos and Chinese were called Mestizos de Sangley or Chinese mestizos, while those between Spaniards and Chinese were called Tornatrás and were classified as blanco or white, together with the mixed-race Spanish mestizos and pure-blooded Spanish Filipinos. The Chinese mestizos were largely confined to the Binondo area. However, they eventually spread all over the islands, and became traders, moneylenders and landowners.[25]

A total of 110 Manila galleons set sail in the 250 years of the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade (1565 to 1815). Until 1593, three or more ships would set sail annually from each port. European Criollos, Meztizos and Mullatos of Spanish, Portuguese, French descent from the Americas, mostly from Mexico and the Caribbean, came in contact with the Local Meztizos. Numerous Mexican land owners and Moorish sailors also settled in the islands during this period. Japanese and Korean Christians who fled from the religious persecution settled during the 1600s until the 1800s.

With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1867, Spain opened the Philippines for international trade. Europeans such as British, German, Portuguese and French were among those who settled in the islands as business increased. More Spaniards of Basque, Catalonian and Moorish ancestry arrived during the next century. Many of these European migrants intermarried with local Mestizos and some assimilated with the indigenous population. They became the precursors of the current Chinese-dominated major corporations and conglomerates of the country.

After the defeat of Spain during the Spanish-American War in 1898, Emilio Aguinaldo declared independence on June 12 while General Wesley Merritt became the first American governors of the Philippines. On December 10, 1898, the Treaty of Paris formally ended the war, with Spain ceding the Philippines and other colonies to the United States in exchange for $20 million dollars.[23][24] United States civil governance was established in 1901, with William Howard Taft as the first American Governor-General.[25] A number of Americans settled in the islands. During World War II, the United States built up military bases on the Philippines, increasing the American population there. In addition, numerous Filipino men enlisted in the US Navy and made careers in it, often settling with their families in the United States. The country gained independence from the United States in 1946.

Following independence, the Philippines has seen both small and large-scale immigration into the country, mostly involving Chinese, Americans, British, and other Europeans, Japanese, and South Asians. More recent migrations into the country by Koreans and other Southeast Asian peoples have contributed to the enrichment of the country's ethnic landscape. Together, some of these recent immigrants have intermarried with the indigenous Filipinos, as well as with the previous immigrant groups, giving rise to Filipinos of mixed racial and/or ethnic origins also known as mestizos.

Genetic studies

A Stanford University study conducted during 2001 revealed that Haplogroup O3-M122 (labeled as "Haplogroup L" in this study) is the most common Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup found among Filipinos. This particular haplogroup is also predominant among Chinese, Koreans, and Vietnamese. Another haplogroup, Haplogroup O1a-M119 (labeled as "Haplogroup H" in this study), is also found among Filipinos, and is shared with the indigenous peoples of Borneo and the rest of the Malay Archipelago. The rates of Haplogroup O1a are highest among the Taiwanese aborigines and Chamic-speaking people. Overall, the genetic frequencies found among Filipinos point to the Ami tribe of Taiwan as their nearest genetic ancestors. In addition, 3.6% of the Philippine population has varying degrees of European ancestry through paternal lineages from both Spanish and United States colonization. However, only 28 individuals from the Philippines were genotyped for this study, a sample size far below the minimum sample size needed to account for credible test results in a population of over 90 million individuals.[26]

Another 2009 study conducted by Oxford University, in which mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) variation in 423 Philippine samples is analyzed in the context of the genetic diversity of other Southeast Asian populations indicated that Filipinos and Taiwanese Aborigines shared with each other the majority of their mt-DNA. Analysis of mtDNA haplogroups indicates a general decrease in the diversity of the most frequent types (B4a1a, E1a1a, and M7c3c) from the Taiwanese aborigines to the Philippines and Sulawesi.[27].

These findings are consistent with the theory that ancestors of the Filipino people have originated on continental East or Southeast Asia before migrating to the Philippines via Taiwan, from both paternal and maternal lineages.

The Philippine Statistics Department does not account for the racial background or ancestry of an individual, and as result the official population of mixed-blood individuals in the Philippines remains unknown.